


this is my kingdom come

by pprfaith



Series: Wishlist 2013 [7]
Category: Doctor Who, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Apocalypse, Community: wishlist_fic, Gen, Sorry?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-15
Updated: 2013-12-15
Packaged: 2018-01-04 18:28:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1084261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pprfaith/pseuds/pprfaith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Martha Jones walks the earth. Loki Odinson... doesn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	this is my kingdom come

**Author's Note:**

> Kerrykhat asked for _Doctor Who/The Avengers, Martha Jones & Loki, Demons by Imagine Dragons_  
> \- I couldn’t pick any one line from the lyrics, so went with the overall... message. Feeling? Impression is probably a good word.  
> It’s also unchecked because I am in a bad place right now and this story hit all the high notes of why. I’m sorry.

+

Martha has been walking the burned Earth for six months, nine days and… she doesn’t know how many hours. Her watch broke weeks ago.

She strides across the plain that was once Asia, now a barren, radiation-soaked wasteland.

More than half the time the Doctor allotted her is over and it feels like it’s been decades and minutes. She’s tired.

She’s tired of the walking, the running, the fear. She’s tired of the demons in her head, the nightmares in her chest. She’s tired of bloody blisters on her feet and the pangs of hunger in her belly.

She’s tired of people running from her in fear, of them begging for help and their bland looks when they realize she’s only come to take even more from them. 

She’s tired of the monsters and this planet, her own _home_ is more full of monsters now than any other place has ever been.

The exhaustion sits so deep that she almost doesn’t hear the whirring sounds of the saddest of all demons coming closer. 

There’s no place to hide, no shelter. She’s in the middle of a plain, wasteland-open, no cover for miles.

This is it then, Martha Jones thinks, and almost feels something like relief. 

There are a dozen of them coming at her from different directions, more dropping out of the sky above her. Hell’s coming for her, six months late. 

_Sorry, Doctor_ , she thinks, and closes her eyes.

The pain never comes. 

Instead the humming of the drones is overpowered by a low _whoosh_ of discharge and when Martha blinks, there is a man standing a few meters away, tall and dark, dressed like something that would have looked fitting on Shakespeare’s stage, but not in this new world.

He’s all black and green and the staff in his hand glows like no weapon she’s ever seen. All around them, the monsters are dropping to the ground like dead flies, sparking ocean blue. Sonic blue.

They land with dull thuds and the newcomer bows mockingly to them in triumph, lowering his weapon. It shimmers and dissolves into nothing. That would have been the last giveaway that he’s not from this world, if the casual dismissal of the dead drones hadn’t done that already.

Word has gotten out. Humanity knows what is inside the little metal spheres. And no matter what they do, the last shreds if humankind can’t quite bring themselves to hate the cannibalized creatures inside. No. Maybe that’s wrong. They can hate them, but they can’t forget what they are, can’t just dismiss them, the way this man does.

He turns to look at her and his eyes and hair match his armour, green and black, black and green. He smirks at her, so smoothly. “Well, this planet has definitely gone to the dogs.”

Martha laughs. She can’t help it. She throws her head back and lets out the hysteria she’s been muffling for days, weeks, months. She laughs and laughs and laughs and her stomach hurts, her muscles cramp, her eyes water. 

It’s so bloody weird to meet someone who hasn’t been in the middle of this mess since the beginning, who doesn’t know, who isn’t as downtrodden as the rest of Earth. 

When she finally gets control of herself, she’s sitting in the dirt with the alien crouched a ways away, watching her like a zoo exhibit. 

“Sorry,” she gasps, wiping tears from her eyes. “I needed that.”

He waves her concern away. “I came for a little amusement, myself,” he admits. He’s bloody gorgeous. “Although it seems I have come too late.” His expression goes sharp. “Or perhaps too early. It seems the final battle is yet to come, even though the war is lost, yes?”

Perceptive.

She should tell him no, no, there’s someone who will save them all, in only a few months, the Doctor will deliver them all, but faith is hard to come by when she’s on her own. Doctor, Doctor, Doctor, that is her mantra, her message, the only prayer to cling to anymore in a world where instead of god, demons reign above.

“I’m sorry the Toclafane got here first,” she tells him, trying for a smile that ends up a watery grimace. It’s a small joke, except for how it isn’t. If he’d gotten here first, maybe the monsters wouldn’t be here. He looked powerful enough, with that staff.

But then she is assuming he is like the Doctor, willing to help, to protect. It seems an awful lot to assume about a random alien dropped out of the sky.

“Toc-la-fane.” He rolls the word around his mouth, tries it out with a thoughtful frown on his lips. 

“I read about them in a book,” he finally tells her and Martha’s brain stalls a little at that because yes, he’s an alien, but the Doctor said the Toclafane were Timelord fairytale creatures and the implications of this man having read some of those is… too much. In this world, with so little hope, it’s too much. She thinks of how the Doctor would leap at the chance to regain a tiny piece of his culture, his people, and almost cries. 

“But I believed them to be stories, nothing more, and the people who once told them long dead.”

“They were,” she answers. “They were.”

He cocks his head to one side, considering her and she can tell when he understands what she is saying.

“There are some of the Norns left in the universe, then. And they brought their monsters with them.”

Smart. As smart as the Doctor, at least. She nods, then shakes her head. “Timelords. They were called Timelords.”

He waves a hand. “We called them Norns, once, when they still came to our world. But it has been millennia since they have been to Asgard. But what would a human girl in the middle of an ending planet know about demons and gods?”

“One of them is my friend,” she tells the alien. “And he’s going to fix this.”

His smile turns sharp as razorblades as he inquires, perfectly polite, “Is he, by chance, the one who caused this little problem?”

Martha thinks of the way the Doctor’s voice wavered just slightly when he said the Master’s name, of his he couldn’t quite meet anyone’s eyes and takes too long to answer.

“No,” she finally says. “No.”

The man laughs and there is something in his eyes that she imagines is a lot like her own gaze, something lost and angry and bitter. Something like monsters falling from the sky with human voices and dreams still trapped inside. 

Something that tells her, without a doubt, that his coming here first would not have changed a thing. This man – alien – whatever – is not here to save anyone. If he is a god, he is a vengeful one, and if he saved her, it was an accident. 

He straightens abruptly. “Well, then. Perhaps I will come back in a few decades and read the story in your history books. Or, perhaps,” he winks at her, exaggerated and gleefully malicious suddenly. She can’t tell if it’s put on, or if the friendliness beforehand was. “I will ask the Toclafane to tell me of how they conquered Midgard, yes?”

She wants to protest. She does. But he’s not here to save anyone and Martha is starting to doubt she is, either. Doctor, Doctor, Doctor. 

_Doctor, I met a man today who reminds me of you._

Her mouth stays closed.

“At any rate, we shan’t meet again, little girl.” He bows, as mocking as when he used the same gesture on the monsters from the sky, and then, in a flash of green, he is gone. 

Martha stands, wipes her trousers down and straightens her pack. 

She resumes walking.

+

+


End file.
